


Impostor in This Country

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fairy Tales, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:30:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica Moore wasn't who she seemed to be, but she still had to find her own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impostor in This Country

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elanurel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanurel/gifts).



_Titania's hand on her forehead, cool fingers against her skin. A sacrifice, she said, needs to be dear._

~~~

For thirteen years, Jessica Moore forgot where she came from. She could remember all the way back to before kindergarten, back to inchworm trikes and training pants, but she couldn't remember a time when she had felt like she fit in the world. The whole world around her felt like a shoe sometimes--a shoe that was too tight, too old and stinky, rubbing around the edges.

She always took off her shoes every chance she got, happy to feel the tickle of grass, the scratch of stones, the deep thrum of wood under her toes, but the ill-fitting world couldn't be shucked off. Wouldn't be. It was when she tried, when she tried to slip out of her life and leave it at the bottom of a river, that she finally remembered.

Remembering was a joy. Remembering was terror.

~~~

Whitewater rafting could be dangerous, everybody knew that--especially when you didn't know how to swim. Her parents had tried to teach her, but Jess never could stand the feeling of water sliding over her head, rivulets tangling up in her hair. Sixteen was supposed to be old enough to start making decisions, and Jess made hers; she let herself fall over the side of the raft as it moved through the churning rapids. She slipped out of the life vest she'd been loosening ever since the leader checked it, and when the current folded her under she closed her eyes and let it take her.

Under the water, she heard a voice whispering to her, whispering a name she'd never heard but that felt like hers. She felt a new current move under her, pushing her up instead of pulling her down, and before she could open her eyes to look for the source of the voice she landed on the riverbank. She fell flat on her stomach, her face in rough grass and dirt, and she started crying, crying for the first time in years, because she finally remembered.

When the rescue people arrived, with the oxygen she didn't need and the blanket she did, she stopped crying. She was alive, and she knew who she was. She didn't know how much time she had left to live in the world of men, but she knew her clock was ticking; finally, she was just like everybody else.

~~~

From the time her mother came to pick her up from the ER waiting room, Jess found it easier to be with her family. It wasn't their fault, after all, that the world couldn't fit right. They'd lost their three-year-old daughter thirteen years previous, and they just never knew it, never knew their sweet little Jessie was taken in the night, never knew the child they kissed the next morning was a replacement, a trick. A changeling.

They knew their teenage daughter changed after that day on the river. "Her accident," Jess heard her father refer to it. "Her scare," Jess's mother whispered on the phone to her sister. Jess stopped worrying so much about the little rules, the things that everyone expected of her. She dropped physics and transferred into advanced art, and she knew that the things she truly wanted--wanted with all her heart--would ultimately go her way.

The way they always had, even if she'd never seen it before.

Two years later, when she was headed for Stanford, she traded in her plane ticket for cash and shipped her suitcases straight to Palo Alto. She hated the thought of flying so far above the earth, and a train was worse--iron rails screaming under her the whole ride. No, she had plenty of time before classes started, and she was determined to make her way to California on her own two feet. She stayed away from the highway, but followed the coast down through one beach town after another. She slept in parks, the cool ground under her a comfort after the long days walking in August heat. She knew how to make herself unseen, and she knew that no man could harm her.

She walked onto the campus one day before classes started, and as soon as she reached the grassy quad in front of the dorms she pulled off her moccasins and let her toes stretch in the grass. Afternoon sun filtered down through the trees, and Jess saw a glint of gold out of the corner of her eye. A boy sat under one of the largest trees on the quad, his head tipped back against the trunk, feet locked up in heavy boots. Jess knew she must have stared too long when he opened his eyes and stood, shifting uncomfortably on his long, long legs.

"Hi," Jessica called out, walking closer. "Sorry, I thought you were somebody I knew."

"Well, I've met a lot of people." He smiled, and in that light he was inhumanly handsome, a young king, a young Oberon. "But I think I would remember you."

He walked her to her new dorm and helped her drag her suitcases from the student union. She fell in love, and it was almost enough to make her forget again.

~~~

In her other life, Jessica had seen others leave, sent away to pay debts or punish failings, traded off for fresh bloodlines or favors. She'd always thought it was a blessing that they would forget--a mercy not to let them mourn the world they left. But her ignorance had never felt like bliss, and she would never take it back. She couldn't know how much time she had left, didn't know when the debt was going to be collected. She got scared sometimes, but in the end she was proud because she knew the truth. She was worth more than her fair cousins with their fine horses and jewels.

She was fairer by far, worthy enough to pay the queen's tithe when hell chose to take her.

~~~

As she lay pinned to the ceiling, watching Sam smile as he ate the cookie she made for him, Jess had a moment to wonder _dear to whom?_ before the fire took her.


End file.
